Going To War for the Orphans

I’m an eternal optimist, always hoping for the best and expecting success. I think positive thoughts and have hope things will work out, and sometimes they do, others they do not.  When it came to my Internet Café Project receiving this container from the town, I was downright pessimistic.  I had many a tiny hope and prayer that it would work out but I was already thinking of plans for when they completely rejected the project idea.

4pm last Thursday was the set time, the mayor finally having arranged the meeting for HAPCO, the Iddir, himself, and me. My heart raced with nervousness as my supervisor and I walked to the meeting.  Having been reading a book about war I couldn’t help but think how our situation was analogous to going to battle.  We strode into the meeting with peace agreement in hand but weapons in our back pockets in case it got nasty.

I sat in a daze as Amharic filled the room, trying my best to keep up with the conversation.  The Iddir chairman having forgotten his peace agreement instead went straight for his pistol; I expected nothing more.  His words were slurred, and as usual I could not comprehend his speech other than to know that it was nothing short of bombastic.  I watched the Mayor’s response and he remained unshaken, giving me my first ounce of hope.

The day had turned into night and we finished the meeting mainly because the room in which we were sitting had no electricity.  As we dispersed into the chilly street I turned to my supervisor to verify what all was said in the meeting. No shots had been fired and although it got off to a rocky start, filled with complaints and disagreements, it ended with handshakes and smiles. My suspensions were confirmed: the container was to be used for the internet café! I doubted and doubted only to be surprised by a positive outcome.

This is the container we will use for the internet cafe!

Apparently the other Iddir members were more willing to negotiate, less interested in hearing themselves talk, thankfully.  We have had another meeting this week to write up an agreement between my project and the Iddir, knowing the community group would still be very actively involved in my project.  Community participation is the key to success for Peace Corps projects so I was in favor of a joint project.  What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the appointment of the Iddir chairman as the new chairman of the internet café project committee.  Seriously?

I’ve turned a new leaf, creating hope and optimism where one might have thought it wasn’t possible.  Maybe this new faith in the chairman is more of a begging prayer.  I still hardly understand his Amharic, am annoyed by his arrogant arm-crossing behavior when other people are finally permitted to speak, and believe he doesn’t listen to anyone besides himself, but I also think he actually wants to help the orphans.  Well, I pray he does anyway.

Next step is a meeting with all the new committee members, whom we’ve selected from various government offices including Labor & Social Affairs, Women’s Affairs, Youth & Sports, and HAPCO.  These representatives will govern the internet café after I leave, insuring that the café remains open, the project is profitable, and the orphans receive the lion’s share.  For now I’m just so very thankful there is a chance I’ll get to see this project through myself.

My Internet Café Project

I realized recently that while I’ve mentioned my internet café project a bunch, I’ve never told the story in its entirety.  The ten orphan boys I grew to love last fall needed something sustainable to get them off the street, or at least put food in their mouths.  This past spring, while talking with my counterpart at HAPCO about helping these boys, we thought of the idea of opening an internet café whose profits will help support these orphans, and others too.  The internet café project we decided would employ one manager, one guard, and several part-time teenage orphans when they weren’t in school.  Every month a percentage of the profits would be divided amongst the orphans we wanted to help.

It was a flawless plan, we figured.  Since Ethiopians are just discovering the glory of the world wide web and Dangila isn’t yet connected (except for my house!), we thought this was a perfect business plan, bound to be a success.

I applied for Peace Corps funding through a grant accessible to Peace Corps volunteers working with HIV, funded by PEPFAR.  My counterpart and I came up with a project proposal, submitted it and were soon approved for the $5,000.  A month or two later, in July, we received the money and began figuring out the logistics of getting the café up and running.  I purchased two computers, a photocopy machine, and a printer in Addis and hauled them up to Dangila.  The next step was securing a location – if you haven’t read my blog entry “Not Knowing Everything” (and why would you have not?) you should now, to understand the rest of this story.  And yet here I am, two and a half months later, without a container for the café.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or container apparently.  There is a catch with this supposed “empty container for orphans.”  An Iddir (community group) was put in charge of organizing the container to benefit orphans from kebele 05 (which is like a small county or neighborhood- - there are five in Dangila).  The container was actually purchased with HAPCO funding over a year ago and since then, not a single birr has been given to the orphans it was suppose to support.  Yet the Iddir won’t relinquish control of the container.

The Iddir chairman’s reasons for not giving the container to this internet café project are flawed and ridiculous.  He says the container is suppose to help only kebele 05 kids, while our project has six orphans from kebeles 01-04.  Twelve of eighteen are from kebele 05 though and we increased the number of orphans early in the project to include all children which were supposed to be supported by the failed container projects.

It came to me one day that I should write him a sincere letter asking if we could please work together to achieve the mutual goal of helping orphans.  It was translated with the help of my friend and presented it to him in his office.  He hardly looked at the letter and definitely wouldn’t look me in the eye.  All he said was, “Aychelem” – it’s not possible.

Next step? Well, HAPCO has a signed contract with the Iddir since the funding originally came from them.  The Iddir promised to help set up a business to help the orphans, and a year later since they have not yet supported the orphans, HAPCO has the ability to take the container back, to give it to my project.  The mayor, who is in full support of my internet café project, wants to first give the Iddir time to “do the right thing” and simply hand over the container. Not likely. Hence the two and a half months of waiting.  And I fear if HAPCO actually tries to enforce the contract and take the container back things could get really ugly.

In the meantime we conducted a basic computer and basic business training for the eighteen orphans we want to help.  The internet café is not simply giving these orphans a portion of its profits, but the project also aims to keep the children involved in the café, and make them active internet users (which they will be able to access free-of-charge for a certain number of hours per month).

With the training completed and the waiting game with the Iddir still counting days, I am starting to worry.  There are only three and a half months left until I leave Dangila and finish Peace Corps, so I am starting to fear this project won’t finish.  I have literally put blood, sweat, and tears into this project (albeit blood by paper cut).  Six months have passed since brainstorming this idea and at the moment I’m feeling disheartened.  I don’t know where to go from here and simply waiting is becoming an impossibility.

Tears and frustration. Sometimes you can give all you have and it still might not be enough.  But I’m not giving up. No ma’am.

Busier Than Ever

 I need to meet with Tilahun in the morning, and we must get the final prices from garages for construction material, oh, and I told Yebeletal I’d meet him at 10am, AND I said I would have lunch with him and his wife! Oh Jennifer, you still haven’t asked Peace Corps for a sample project proposal, and you should also send an email to potential donors too…

I continue to toss and turn, not being able to fall asleep or calm my mind from all that is running through it.

About a year ago I think on any average day my mind had to race to think of just something to do, and now the work is abundant.  I no longer title my lists, “To Do” but, “Must Do!”  I’m not sure when this change occurred, which is usually a sign that it happened gradually, but in this case I feel like my workload quadrupled overnight.  I’m teaching the class of girls still, but we’ve combined the classes so it is just twice a week.  Thankfully, it is no longer four evenings a week because I now have time to tutor a few primary school boys one day a week.  I’m working with HAPCO to start an internet café/photocopy center to benefit 15 orphans.  I am trying to help the Anti-Malaria Association with creating an association for the commercial sex workers in town, which I will eventually help write a grant proposal to assist them with changing their work.  Finally, I’ve been starting to talk to Health Extension Workers and Traditional Birthing Assistants about having an official training so they can work together in the future.

No wonder my mind is running non-stop.

I am a good bit into “Year 2” now and I finally understand why Peace Corps is a 2-year commitment (27 months to be exact).  I remember reading that stipulation and thinking, “wow, that is quite a long time!”  Daunting, in fact.  The thought of committing to 2 years of anything right out of college is a little much, yet alone saying, “yes, I want to spend the next 2 years in a developing country of your choice, Peace Corps.” And with the roll of a dice, here I am, in Ethiopia.

But I understand now.  It could be that I now see each month as a number; the end is in sight and I feel like I have so much left to do, so my jog has turned into a sprint.  Except I don’t think that is why I have so much to do right now.  I think it truly takes a year to finally settle into your community, to even begin to understand some of the problems here, and finally start to realize how I can help.  It takes a year to find counterparts that understand what you’re here to do and who are willing to help you with projects.  It takes a year for even a portion of the 36,000 people in urban Dangila to even know that I live here. And apparently it takes a year to finally receive a semi-accurate sounding population statistic for your town!

Arbay is happy here too!

I get it.  It’s the Year 2 thing.  Twelve months ago I wouldn’t have considered extending my contract here.  I didn’t understand how someone could consider extending, just because I missed home so much that it was painful.  It would be like starting a marathon and in the first mile saying, “why don’t I make it an even 30 miles today?”  But once you get towards the end you can consider maintaining that pace a bit longer.  That being said, I’m not going to extend my service.  However, I would consider it, and even that is a huge change in my frame-of-mind from a year ago.

There are so many differences in Year 1 and Year 2.  I don’t think I ever realized there would be before right now.  I started thinking of Dangila as home a long time ago, so I never considered it could be more than that.  I recently finished the book The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner and in the book he ponders the quote from his friend, “I mean, in the end, you come home because this is where you live.”  Last year I called Dangila home because it was where I lived.  Now I call it home because there are countless families who consider me part of their family, restaurants remember I don’t like sugar in my tea, the kids know my name… but definitely not just because it is where I live.

Hitting the Ground Running

I arrived back in Dangila just one week ago and have already logged more hours in the classroom than in the entire prior year.  Before I left for Mid-Service Conference my counterpart from the Anti-Malaria Association, Yebeletal, and I decided we wanted to co-teach a group of girls grade 9-12.  We decided upon a basic curriculum, English and Life skills, and approached the high school and preparatory school in town about our “English Club” idea.  They were immediately receptive, but I still doubted the amount of work that would be done to arrange the classes while I was out of town.

To my surprise when I visited Yebeletal’s office the day after arriving back in Dangila he said we had class that night, and two classes the next day! Moreover, one session of the class had already been conducted without me!  I immediately jumped onboard and began preparing my Life skills (empowerment tools) lessons.  Now I am teaching a two-hour class four days a week! The schools were instructed to choose 15 female students from each grade that wanted to attend an extracurricular class, and we divided them into two groups to keep the classes under 30 students each.

In addition to teaching, HAPCO (my counterpart organization) has finally received funding for their normal activities such as VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing, for HIV).  These events I have mentioned in the past, where the health workers go out into the community and set up a testing station for a few days at a time to allow residents to get tested without having to go to the health center.  This week I’ve attended two all-day VCT events at the high school, where my job includes running around trying to recruit the 9th and 10th graders to get tested, along with trying to speed up the line of people waiting by taking student’s age and distributing identification numbers.  In just two days 600 students were tested!  I feel like the past week has been a complete whirlwind of events and work; In fact, I haven’t even had time to unpack my backpack from the trip.

I’ve been talking to my HAPCO supervisor about starting a project with those 10 orphaned boys I helped out late last year, and I have a couple other big project ideas swirling around in my head that should keep me just as busy for the next six months.  The craziest part of all this chaos is that the months I have left here definitely feel numbered. I’m down to less than 10 months until my group can begin to COS (close service).  As exhausted as I am from this week filled with long workdays, I would love to spend the next 10 months doing just that.  I really want to make the most of every day I have left here, because I know it will all be over with before I know it.

Once again, I want to thank everyone for supporting me in this journey of mine.  I am truly having the time of my life and slowly but surely discovering what I want to do in this world. Thank you.

Back to Finding Work

Since my raffle project ended a few weeks ago, life has slowed down considerably. I am falling back into my routines in town, making the rounds to have coffee with neighbors I haven’t hung out with in a while. Work is slow again, but I’m dealing with a lot of little projects including teaching the high school anti-AIDS club, trying to get funding for a group of commercial sex workers to start a restaurant, and my favorite, playing with these ten boys who are living in a house together for three months.

This house, funded by CVM, is supposed to take these ten boys, between 12-14 years old, and improve their behavior. Some are troubled children, most are missing at least one parent, and they all have been working on the streets, selling peanuts and lottery tickets to help support themselves. For three months they live together and are not suppose to go anywhere besides school, including visits to their families. Meaning, in some ways, they are each other’s family for three months, and in turn, I’ve come to think of them as family too. They have been living together for two months now, and I find myself going to hangout with them almost daily now that my raffle project is finished.
 

One of my favorite parts of going to play with the boys is that they love my dog. I have so much fun watching them run around with her. She gets to be a puppy with them, and that makes me happy. The boys also have one girl, Tigist, who cooks food for them and supervises them. I have come to adore Tigist, who is about my age, and respect her so much, because as much as I enjoy playing with the boys on occasion, taking care of the little troublemakers would be out of my league. She is such a strong woman and our friendship, even though it is completely in Amharic, is so special to me.

Cultural Catch 22

One of my recent projects I started talking to my HAPCO counterparts about is a promotional campaign for people to get HIV tested.  That’s right, bringing my Communication degree skills to Dangila!  Let me explain some of the preliminary research I have been doing first...

At the health center in Dangila people with HIV can come get first-line ART medication for free.  This medication has only become available in Ethiopia a couple years ago, and it is changing HIV.  With the medication, HIV can be seen as a chronic illness, not the death sentence it used to be.  The problem is that in Ethiopia, there is still a huge stigma surrounding HIV and people don’t completely understand the drugs.  I have been reviewing some charts of ART patients in the health center and the problem seems to be that people aren’t starting ART soon enough, so it is not effective.  I realized that what I want to convey to the people of Dangila is that they need to be tested on a regular basis so that if they do have HIV, they can start ARTs at the appropriate stage to help prolong their life.

It was through all of this that I came up with the idea to have an advertising push for getting yourself tested.  Since it is free to be tested at the health center, it seems to me like an easy product to sell.  All they have to do is walk over there once every three months, get pricked by a needle, and wait 30 minutes for results.  I want people to realize that with ARTs available, there isn’t a death certificate attached to the disease; ART can extend your life, but you have to know that you have HIV in the early stages.

I got together with one of my good Ethiopian friends while HAPCO was in a meeting and we translated a sample flier into Amharic.  It wound up being so catchy; the translation was funny and engaging and I was very excited about printing them out and hanging them all over town! I presented the idea to my HAPCO supervisor after their meeting finished and ran into an unexpected wall.  The very religious people of Ethiopia don’t believe that medicine can extend your life, but rather only God can decide the number of days you will live.  So, basically, you can’t deliver the punch line of my flier; you can’t say ART extends your life.  This life-changing drug is available and you can pretty much only say “ART will relieve the pain of HIV,” which isn’t what it does.

 
I found myself caught in this loop of wanting to express to the Ethiopians the greatness of ART in order to reduce stigma around HIV, but not being able to convey how it can extend your life without insulting their religion and culture.  I just don’t get it.  I am religious and I agree that God has our days numbered before we were ever created.  I also believe that God created this world full of hidden wonders so that we can discover the world for ourselves.  One recent discovery, which I believe God allowed for and provided for, is ART.  It is the same concept as getting your infants vaccinated, which many Ethiopians do; you are using God-given medications to stop the diseases from killing you so that you can fulfill God’s purpose for your life!

 
But apparently all of that would be found insulting to their religion.  It doesn’t make sense to me, but I intend to figure out a way to communicate to the people how important it is to get tested without using the incentive of life-extending drugs.  Still working on it...

A Little Work and A Little Play

As it turns out, my trip to Addis last week was less exciting than I thought.  It was very Ethiopian, in the sense that nothing much was planned ahead of time, so much of the trip was spent showing up to meet with organizations without appointments.  I think it was a learning experience for my two colleagues and me.  I am very glad I decided to go despite the lack of organization; one more adventure that has made me step outside my comfort-zone.

I arrived back in Dangila just in time for a two-week meeting to start for all government employees.  While I was invited to attend this 14-day Amharic-language meeting, I reasoned my time would be better spent around town.  This past week has made me realize how much I depend on my HAPCO counterparts for translating and preparing projects around town.  Without co-workers to socialize with or an office to sit in, I have spent a lot of time exploring Dangila, like I use to when I first arrived.  I found myself walking out of my house one day with a To-Do List that read: Return movies to video shop, Buy bread, Stop by post office.  I thought to myself, if I close my eyes for a minute I might be able to convince myself that I am about to hop in my car and drive to Blockbuster, Kroger and the post office.

One of my days of exploration included finally renting a VCD from this video shop I often frequent to buy blank CDs.  For only two Birr ($.20) I was able to slip the new movie into my bag and continue my day around town.  Later, as I sat down to watch the video; I realize it is dubbed over in Amharic.  Now, if it was that simple I might have even watched it to learn a word or two, but dubbed is probably too professional of a word to use.  The normal audio was still present, only muffled a bit, and overtop was one man’s voice for all the characters, in rushed and awkward Amharic.  Needless to say, I will just consider that two Birr the cost of learning never to rent a VCD again.

Since a couple projects I’m starting require the assistance of my HAPCO co-workers, I’ve taken this break to spend some quality time focusing on the cultural exchange goals of the Peace Corps.  I have been accepting most invitations to drink coffee, and after a trip to the market Saturday, my friend Tizda is teaching me how to cook a bunch of Ethiopian food!  The better part of one afternoon was also spent trapping a mouse in my house. I'm still not sure why my dog, who loves killing chickens, couldn’t help me with this task. Only three workers are remaining at the health center during this two-week meeting, and lucky for me they are the ART nurses who are my good friends.  I have been visiting the health center just about every day to hangout with them and have them tell me how good my Amharic is getting.  Haha.  Those women are so fun, and quite the ego boost!  I’m very excited about tomorrow afternoon, when we are going to prepare a coffee ceremony at the health center together.

 

I have visited a new café, found a new shortcut to the main road, been to the home of a new neighbor, and met a couple great new friends.  It has been such a fun week in Dangila, and it is now “home” to me more than ever before, especially after arriving back from an exhausting trip to Addis.  While I was skeptical about the amount of work I would accomplish without HAPCO for two weeks, I have realized my ability to get around on my own and love my friends in town dearly.

Getting There Is Half the Battle

This week I have found myself on a four day “business trip” in the capital, Addis Ababa.  Well, I use that term very roughly.  I was invited by the Awi Development Association (Awi is my zone, which is the equivalent of an American county), with whom I’ve been meeting with over the past couple months, to join them on a trip to Addis to meet with potential partner NGOs.  I was starting to think about all the things I could write about this trip I’m on, and decided to first make sure I paint a picture of transportation in Ethiopia before I begin talking about the details of this current adventure.

To travel the 500km from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa you have about five choices of transportation.  The first is flying.  It takes maybe 45 minutes and Ethiopian Airlines serves the most delicious muffins I’ve tasted in this country, but unless Peace Corps is flying me for a meeting, it is way out of my price range.  The second option is a private car, which is just as impractical as flying considering I don’t know a single person who owns a car.  This leaves us with the only three real options for traveling: a coach bus, a mini-bus, and the big local bus.

A recent arrival in Ethiopia, Selam Bus offers comfortable and roomy seats and even serves you a drink and piece of bread.  In America, these coach buses would still be considered less than ideal, but here they are my number one choice for traveling.  Next is the mini-bus, which is a 12-seater van that often seats up to 24 grown adults.  Typically on the long trips, such as the journey from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa, they limit it to 14 though.  These mini-buses travel a lot faster than the big buses, which means you could make the trip in just about eight or nine hours.  The mini-bus is just slightly cheaper in price than the Selam Bus, and considering you are putting your life in the hands of driver, swerving around every bend, it is worth the upgrade to Selam.  Then there is the big ‘ol local bus.  Each asymmetrical row seats three on one side of the aisle and two on the other.  The benches are less than comfortable and even sitting with the skinniest Ethiopians you find yourself fighting for ample wiggle-room.  These buses cost about half the price of the Selam Bus though, and therefore still the most popular option for the average Ethiopian.  Although it can take over 12 hours, the slow speed makes it a bit safer, plus you get the added bonus of a priceless adventure, guaranteed.

Considering I was traveling with colleagues, and the association was fronting the costs, of course we took the big slow bus.  It was my first experience traveling local style for the entire 500 kilometers, but there is a first time for everything!  We woke up at 5:00AM making sure we would arrive at the bus station by 5:30AM, and the bus was already filling up quickly.  The three of us grabbed a bench towards the back and settled in for a long trip.  We started puttering down the road by 6:00AM, and the sun started to light up the sky outside my window on the left side.  I managed to get about 30-minutes of sleep but spent a majority of the ride staring at the green landscape and listening to music on my iPod.

We were making great timing, arriving at the Blue Nile Gorge just after 11AM, over halfway to Addis!  There was rumor of a landslide at the gorge, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I kept my eyes out for something unusual along the way.  We twisted our way down into the valley, crossed the Blue Nile River and climbed most of the way back up the opposite side.  I started thinking to myself that they must have cleaned up the landslide, and wondered what it had looked like.  Just as that thought was swirling around in my mind we turned the corner to a long line of trucks.  Time ticked past as we waited to move inch by inch further.  It seemed like every time I would get out of the bus to stretch, the line would move a hundred meters forward.  Every now and then four or five trucks or buses would pass us going in the opposite direction on the narrow two-lane road.  All we could see was the face of a cliff on one side of the road and a foggy abyss on the other. After a while of waiting, a couple buses from behind us passed us on the left lane, and not wanting to lose our ground, our bus followed.

An hour after we arrived at the backup we were still stopped, but now both lanes were filled with traffic heading south and I could only imagine what kind of gridlock we were creating.  Finally we found ourselves at the scene of the accident, the landslide itself.  A section of the road, about 100 meters long, on the side of a mountain, had slid about a meter and a half down and over from its original location.  Ramps made out of piles of dirt and gravel were constructed at both ends where the pavement split.  One direction at a time, cars would slowly cross this unstable stretch of road.  It didn’t seem like the section would slide any further, but it was kind of scary to think that could happen in the first place.

One of the craziest parts was there was no official directing traffic.  This landslide happened about a week before, and every day there is utter chaos to cross this section.  Could you imagine in America what would happen if part of a cliff-side road that connected two major cities had a collapse like this?  And what if one side of the traffic decided to fill both lanes of the narrow road?  And no on was at the site instructing the traffic to take turns at even intervals…? It was just one more reminder that I am still in a developing country.

Overall we arrived in Addis Ababa about 12 hours exactly after leaving, not bad considering we were stopped at the landslide for almost two hours.  It was a great experience on the public bus I feel; not nearly as horrible as it could have been.  I will update soon with the happenings of this trip here in Addis.

The Jennifer Show

Do you ever get that feeling that someone’s staring at you? Their eyes burning a hole in the back of your head? Yep, I’ve had that feeling for eight months now.  It’s kind of like I’m on The Truman Show, well, The Jennifer Show, and everyone knows where I am or what I’m doing at all times.  Trying to get out of town without everyone knowing is like climbing over a pile of pots and pans without waking the dog sleeping beside them.

This past week HAPCO hosted a “Community Conversation” training for 42 townspeople, which means I sat through a lot of lectures in Amharic.  I’m there to support HAPCO though and I’ve enjoyed being a part of the trainings.  My supervisor, Tilahun, who is running the training, is nice enough to help me translate a session on possible ways they could help with HIV in Dangila, and ways I could help too.  For one session though, trainees were told to record for one hour their surroundings using just one sense- sight, sound or touch.  A few then presented later what they recorded, and let’s just say a lot of people mentioned me in their report.  Luckily I didn’t make an appearance in the “touch” reports.

One person focusing on sight noted that “during the tea break everyone was watching Jennifer.”  One sound observer mentioned that “people were often talking about the ferengi.”  I’m pretty famous.  Six months in Dangila and I’m still the talk of the town.  Luckily for the most part, people yell my name instead of “Ferengi” and I have regular shops and restaurants that know exactly what I will order, and how I like it served!  It is a lot more of a home for me than six months ago, but I haven’t been here long enough to lessen curiosity.  I’m not sure I’m willing to stay until the day no one is curious about me anymore. I think that would take a long, long while.

Dangila Market.

Speaking of me stirring up curiosity, I never draw a bigger crowd than when I make a trip to the market.  Today I went for the first time in about a month, because while I enjoy the challenge of the hectic market scene, I only convince myself to go after the memory of the previous trip wears off quite a bit.  I wish I had an aerial view of the market when I arrive; surely, you could see the crowds of people shift to follow me wherever I turn.  I’m always at the eye of the storm of people at the market.  Luckily, I know the prices for most of the produce I want to buy, so I am rarely ripped off, but everything about the trip is a hassle. Today especially since there was rain all during the night the entire marketplace, which appears three days a week in a big field, was a mud pit. More about the circus of the marketplace later; now I have to return to a HAPCO training, yes, on a Saturday!

Fitting into Dangila

There have been several incidents last month that happened in my daily life here that make me think, “I can do this. Dangila really is my home now.” Just writing that is sort of scary actually, admitting this town in Ethiopia is “home,” but I am loving life here for many different reasons. This blog is going to be several recent stories from life in Dangila before IST.



Coffee on the Porch

Last weekend the wife of my landlord came home for a visit. She goes to school in Bahir Dar and is rarely in Dangila, so I was happy to see her walk through the gate on Saturday morning. Within a couple of hours of when she arrives home, she usually prepares a coffee ceremony and invites a couple of neighbors over. I was not surprised when she came knocking on my door late that morning telling me to drink coffee. I was surprised that the coffee ceremony was on the front porch of the house. I thought to myself, “what a fun change of scenery!” The front gate of the compound remained open for the incoming neighbors, and plenty of people passing by the gate turned their heads as they walked to stare at my unusual presence.

A couple days later I was meeting with my Amharic tutor when he said, “You drank coffee on the porch.” While he meant this as a question, he said it as a statement. I began thinking, “He’s never been to my house. Does he even know where I live? How did he see me on the porch? Maybe he walked by and didn’t say ‘hi?’” I was puzzled to say the least. Finally, he says, “Yes, it was St. Mary’s birthday. It is customary to have a coffee ceremony on your veranda.” I celebrated St. Mary’s birthday and didn’t even know it!

I Am a Funny Girl

The HAPCO office where I work has three other employees: my supervisor, my counterpart, and our secretary. One day we were using the town’s car to visit five different primary schools in Dangila to assess their Anti-AIDS clubs. We had driven out to a very rural area to start, and made our way back to the urban-most area of town. It was just my supervisor, my counterpart and me, along with the driver, and since my co-workers speak decent English, I tend to speak in English to them. In the middle of our trip we were driving on a bumpy dirt road when my supervisor, Tilahun, points across a field to a dirt road no different than the one we were on and says, “The school is over there on the dusty road.”

I look perplexed and said, “Tilahun, which road is not dusty?”

They laughed and laughed and laughed. Almost every day at work now, a month later, Tilahun will tell me, “When I think of this day I always laugh. ‘Which road is not dusty?’ You are a funny girl!”

Dryer Sheets

I recently requested my mom to send me some dryer sheets in the mail. I have no dryer, or washing machine; I hand wash and line dry each item of clothes I wear, trust me. I made the request because my puppy always has a static-cling thing going on, so the dryer sheets come in handy to make sure she isn’t a complete dirt magnet. I have been using them for a couple weeks now when I examined the box I have been pulling the sheets out of—it pictures a clothesline drying clothes. I think to myself, “whoa! Can I use these with line-drying my clothes?” Oh, silly me… no, you cannot. The only instructions on the box are for a drying machine.

I have come to the conclusion that this advertising was suppose to appear as quaint or charming. I would not usually describe my washing days are charming, but there is something delightful about looking at a clothesline full of your clean clothes, admiring your work. I still am not quite sure why you would put this picture on the packaging though. I suppose it is more appealing than the picture of a dryer?

The Girl with a Plan

I always like to have a plan.  I plan things for tomorrow, I plan things for later this year, and I have even started planning possible adventures for after my time in the Peace Corps.  I suppose that is just who I am.  The next two years are going to be a testament to this habit of mine because it has never been harder to have a plan.

Recently I have found myself writing letters in the morning, explaining briefly, what I plan to do that day.  If you have received one of these letters, you can probably disregard what I wrote, because something entirely different probably occurred.  Yet, I am sitting here in my house on my laptop with a list in front of me of things I need to do tomorrow.  I can guarantee you all these things won’t be crossed off in the next 24 hours.  What I cannot guarantee is that ANY of these things will be crossed off!

That’s the funny thing about life here, you really never know what is going to happen when you wake up in the morning.  Everyday is different, and most days I really love that part of my life right now.  I don’t mind when things do go as planned I suppose, I just love having that plan in case I find time to myself (which is not often these days).  In fact, writing a new blog has been on my list for a while now, and guess what? That didn’t go as planned either.

I PLAN on getting online tomorrow and emailing my mom this update for her to post, but you just never know.  That plan requires the electricity to be on, the little store nearby that lets me use internet must be open, the phone line has to be working to allow the computer to dial up.  All that can only be a factor if I actually find time to go to the store in the first place.

Why have my plans fallen by the wayside? Well, partly because Ethiopians do not plan.  It is not unusual for me to get a knock on my door at any hour telling me to come drink coffee or eat injera.  These get-togethers are not typically announced to me beforehand, but rather a spontaneous gathering.  It is also not usually a question, but rather a command, “Be!” (Eat!).  These impromptu invitations have caused me more than once to eat a meal twice.  I will have just finished lunch when a knock comes announcing lunch next door.  I politely eat a small serving and enjoy the Ethiopian company.

Just this morning I planned on having a relaxing Saturday with only one appointment, lunch at 1pm lunch.  I planned on getting up at 6am and going on a run with Arbay at sunrise, the only time I can find a little peace and quiet outside my house.  Believe it or not, that part went as planned!  Then I planned on taking a shower, which had to be substituted with a bucket bath because not only was the water off, but the water tank on my compound was empty.  My lazy morning of reading was suspended when my neighbor Ali started talking to me about his new satellite dish.  It is not uncommon for families to have satellite TV, which Ali told me, cost 1400 Birr ($140) for the satellite box and dish (once you have the box and dish there are no additional payments).

So Ali tells me he thinks he has to pay 200 Birr for someone to assemble the dish ($20 for assembling a small dish here is outrageous!).  I tell him I am quite handy and that I will help him put it together.  After a short trip to the hardware store, where they let us borrow the 2 wrenches we needed, it took less than an hour for me to decode the confusing instructions put together the dish with the help of Ali and the 12-year-old son of my landlord.  They were so grateful that they insisted on feeding me lunch at noon, which I could not decline, before hurrying off to my 1pm lunch appointment.

After that lunch appointment and coffee ceremony, I headed home expecting another coffee ceremony at my neighbor’s house (which was mentioned to me earlier this morning).  It is now 4pm, the other coffee ceremony has yet to occur, but I did take time to play jump rope (with an old tube of some sort) with the kids in my compound for a while.  Now I finally have found a brief moment of silence and decided to sneak away to my house before the next inevitable knock at my door!

Signed, Stamped, Delivered

My big assignment during my first three months in Dangila is to assess the needs.  You can do this in several different ways, such as, random surveys, simply talking to various people, or by conducting an official meeting.  I have been talking to people for a couple months now and finally decided to have an actual needs assessment meeting to see what I could find out.

I began a few weeks ago talking to my supervisor about this meeting that I wanted to hold.  I explained briefly what I wanted to do during the meeting and he agreed to help me arrange it.  Fast forward to the day before the meeting; at this point, I am under the impression that the meeting is set and all is well.  “The mayor has finally approved your meeting!” my supervisor tells me.  “Now we must send out a notice to all the government offices to announce it.” Oh??

It turns out that hosting a meeting for the government employees means we must get official approval from the mayor and send out an official announcement.  I thought that it would be a word-of-mouth event, and I thought that invitation had been orally passed on a week ago!

“No problem,” he tells me, “we will just get our secretary to type up the announcement… oh, but she has not come back to work since Easter and we do not know where she is.”
“Is there something we can do about that? Can you type Amharic?”
”I will get a secretary from another government office to volunteer.” 


It is now two hours until our office closes on the day before my meeting.  Tilahun, my supervisor, finally writes up the announcement, gets that approved by the mayor and finds someone willing to type the half-page note.  Ok, no problem, we still have two hours to type up the note and distribute it.  Tilahun tells me that there is a messenger that can easily deliver the note to all 18 offices, clustered in a stretch of road no longer than half a kilometer.  I patiently wait as I watch Tilahun photocopy the paper one copy at a time because the machine we use only semi-works.  Then, I become slightly antsy as I watch him take the note to the mayor one more time; the mayor then hand signs and stamp two official markings on each note.  Stamping things is a big deal here. Each piece of paper that leaves our office must be stamped, with stamp and inkpad, for reasons beyond me.  Then I eagerly watch Tilahun handwrite an extremely long identification number, and date on each paper.  When I am about to burst he reaches for two more stamps to finally make the notice ready-to-go.  With just 15 minutes before offices close, I took a sigh of relief as I watch the letters pass into the messenger’s hands.

 
I arrive at my office when it opens at 8:30am the next morning to finish some final preparations for the meeting taking place at 9am.  Tilahun chuckles as he tells me “we” put the wrong date on the notice yesterday (note: the date was using the Amharic calendar, which I have no idea how to convert).  I am less-than-amused, but not a problem as Tilahun calls each of the 18 offices quickly to make sure they understand the meeting is today.  Why we couldn’t have made those 18 phone calls yesterday afternoon and avoid all that stamping nonsense, I am not sure.  Finally, we casually stroll over to the meeting hall at 9:05am and I snickered thinking about how early I would have arrived in America for a meeting I was hosting.  I also knew ahead of time that when we arrived, ten minutes late, no one would be there yet.  I was right.   What I had not anticipated was that 45 minutes later I would be sitting in the meeting space with my counterpart and one attendee.

I am not even sure why I waited that long.  I was just daydreaming I suppose and time passed without my knowledge.  Finally, three more people showed up, and then I walked out to the entrance of the recreational center where the meeting was located, and several more people were waiting to attend also, playing table tennis while they waited.  Then, by 10am, almost 15 people showed up! By the time the meeting started, and hour and fifteen minutes late, 21 people were ready to participate!

I had given up on the meeting, I really had.  I had already started to think about when we should reschedule; the possibility of enough people arriving an hour late was not an option in my mind.  Just when I think I’ve had enough, Ethiopia pulled through.  I had a very successful meeting that lasted over two hours! I will talk some about the results in weeks to come, but for now, I am just overwhelmed with joy that it actually happened!

Exploit Me, Please!

Today I headed into the HAPCO office around 9:30am as usual.  I wrote a letter and read a magazine while I waited for my supervisor, Tilahun, to come back from an appointment of some sort.  When he returned we chatted about the town and he informed he that once again, there is no work to do, because they are waiting on funding.  As I was walking out of the office a couple hours after I arrived I confirmed once more that there were no meetings today before heading out into the community for the afternoon.  Tilahun called after me, “Wait! There is one.  There is an HIV testing going on at the preparatory school that started yesterday and is finishing today.  I am going to visit this afternoon if you would like to come.”

After lunch, I came back to the office and three of us hopped into a bajaj, the three-wheeled taxis, and rode the five minutes to the school.  I had been to one VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) out in the rural areas a few weeks before, so I knew what to expect—a large group of people each given a number as an identification waiting to be called.  Each person is first called upon by the counselor, who privately gathers basic personal information such as age, and gender.  Next, the medical worker will call each person up to have his or her blood drawn.  Finally, after about 30 minutes, the same counselor will call each person back to give then a brief counseling session as they read the HIV results.  Because this is a “mobile VCT,” is it not held in a health center, but simply outside in a small area, in which the counselor secludes himself/herself in a wooded area for privacy.

As we walked into the compound of the preparatory school and I followed Tilahun we approached a group of three men sitting around chatting.  I waited for a moment, looking around for a cluster of high school-aged students nearby to find the testing site, when I saw a rack holding vials of blood beside one of the men.  “This is where they are doing the testing? Where are the students?” It was about 2pm on Tuesday, the second day of this two-day VCT.  They had sat outside for almost two full days and only had 40 students tested yesterday and just 28 today! The school has over 3,000 students!

A group of high school students in their blue uniforms.

I could not believe it. Tilahun was very disappointed, saying that he was expecting over 300 students to be tested in these two days.  We sat around for a little while and I zoned out of the Amharic conversation going on around me and started looking around the schoolyard for students dressed in blue uniforms.  As a few students walked in relatively close proximity to us, Tilahun noticed them too, called to them in Amharic asking them to come to the VCT.  I watched them wave and keep on walking, but Tilahun’s eagerness sparked motivation inside of me. “Come on!” I said standing up from the bench I was seated on and motioning for Tilahun to follow me.  “Let’s not just sit around, let’s go talk to these students that seem to just be lingering around the campus.”  Tilahun was more than willing to humor me but I could tell the tone of his response that he did not think it would do any good.

During training in Ambo, we split up into four groups of ten people and spend one day a week for four weeks in smaller towns surrounding Ambo.  We visited schools and anti-AIDS clubs, learning a lot about how to start getting involved with HIV activities.  If I learned nothing else from those visit (which is not the case), one statement made by a student there stuck in my mind: “Just your ferengi presence is power.”  I knew it was true because it is hard not to notice the heads turning everywhere I go.  Tilahun always talks about “incentives” for meetings, claiming we must supply people with per diem, or at least tea and coffee to get them to come.  I know that if I advertise that I am going to be pretty much anywhere, people show up, no free tea or coffee necessary.

We walked around the school’s campus and noticed several groups of students merely hanging out by the doors of their classrooms.  Tilahun took the initiative and told the students to get back in their seats, and they obeyed as we strolled in behind them, standing in front of the classroom.  He began speaking in Amharic about the VCT going on today, which they had all been informed about last week.  As he spoke, I looked out to a sea of eyes, all staring at me.  I heard him introduce me in his impromptu speech and a few students spoke out, wanting me to say something in English.  I am pretty sure I was already beaming at this point, realizing how much this was going to help promote the testing; I then greeted them in Amharic and spoke very briefly in English about the VCT going on, unsure of how much they were really comprehending.  I am still uncertain if they could detect a tone of begging across language and cultural barriers, but at the time, I did not care, knowing that this operation was already shamelessly using my presence as power.  We repeated this about five more times to classrooms of about thirty students, all of which happen to be missing a teacher today.  That problem I will address another day.

Students lining up to get tested for HIV.

By the time we finished talking to the last classroom and returned to the testing area there, gathered around the site, was a group of blue-uniform wearing students all waiting to be tested.  It was the exact site I expected when arriving an hour or so before.  Tilahun smiled back at me, happy in our accomplishment of recruiting so many students.  I think today he finally realized how much we can accomplish together.  We did not reach the original goal, but in the last two hours of the VCT we nearly doubled the amount of students tested.  I told Tilahun to please exploit the ferengi any time you want to help people learn about HIV.  I had one of the best days today at an event that was almost overlooked.  For the first time I did not get frustrated by the stares, instead I smiled and allowed myself to be the circus show, smiling and waving as students took pictures of me with their cell phones, knowing that being exploited for the betterment of Dangila is something I can endure any day.

Finding My Role

I have officially been at my sight for one month! This is a very exciting milestone, because now we are allowed to travel within our respective zones.  The first month we could not leave our site, even for a day trip, in order to integrate into the community and build a foundation.  Just one month later, I am proud to say that I now call my two-room oasis my home.  I have not written a lot this past month, mostly because internet is rare in my town, but that does not mean there was a lack of stories and adventures, so I will try to catch you up with all my recent happenings.

My bedroom, outfitted with a fancy blue mosquito net.

Let me start by explaining my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Dangila.  It is a little bit like trying to explain what a cow does all day, who really knows? (Note: most analogies these days will coincide with animals that now live in my compound).  A massive cow, with rather intimidating horns, lives in my compound at night.  Each morning a man comes into the compound and takes the cow away, much to the dismay of the baby calf that also lives here.  Each night the same man returns the cow and it strolls past my door nonchalantly swinging its head, and weapons, as it walks.  “Where does it go all day? What is it doing?” I ask myself nightly.  I am sure it is working and being useful, but I have no idea what it accomplishes.  This cow is like me. I am not sure where I go each day, but I know I leave each morning and return each evening having accomplished things.  I might buy a new bucket, or eat at my favorite juice house, or chat it up with the post office worker, or drink eight-too-many cups of sugary coffee with new friends; each day is a little different than the last, one of my favorite parts of living in Ethiopia.

This is one of my main struggles as I try to explain my role to my supervisor across a large language and cultural barrier. My role is, well, undefined.  I am here to work on HIV/AIDS and other health related ‘projects.’  A project could be anything from helping with a HIV testing campaign, to teaching English in a high school, to organizing an income-generating activity for orphans.  The hard part is that in order for a project to be sustainable (i.e., it won’t collapse when I leave in two years) you need community involvement and motivated people to work with.  This means that during the day I spend a lot of time getting to know various community members, and hoping motivated people come to me seeking assistance or information.

While my host organization is HAPCO, they are a non-implementing organization, so they may serve as a good resource and link to other community members, but I do not work a 9-5 desk job with them (despite my supervisor’s wishes).  That is another issue I am dealing with; almost two months ago all 40 volunteers from my training class spent three days in the capital, Addis Ababa, meeting our counterparts and sitting through informational sessions on how we as volunteers will be working with our host organizations.  Unfortunately, my counterpart had moved towns by the time I returned to Dangila three weeks later, leaving my only other contact, my supervisor, making comments like, “you are late to work!”

One of my favorite days yet; working at a HIV testing event in the rural area with my supervisor.

HAPCO was generous enough to donate an office desk and chair for me to work at when I am in the office, but since our office was the size of a cubicle, where three people already worked (with only two desks), my supervisor asked the government building across the street for an extra office.  By this point, several “this is what I do” conversations later, I thought he understood that I would not be sitting in the office for 8 hours a day simply reading a book and writing letters (I try to limit that time to just a couple hours daily). However, when he said, “this will be your new office, but they say you can only have it if you sit here in the morning and the afternoon,” I realized we still had a problem.  Sitting in the office with the other Ethiopians for a few hours each day served as time to get to know my co-workers and ask plenty of questions in order to try to figure out what exactly the office does, but sitting in an office across the street, by myself, for the whole day would be completely pointless.  Things managed to work themselves out though, and all four of us at HAPCO transferred over to the new and bigger office they originally wanted to give just to me.

The police station is that lovely two-tone building.

This would be a good time to explain the location of the old HAPCO office. It was in the police station.  Please disregard any mental images that have just come to your mind that resemble the set of “NYPD Blue” or the like. Instead, picture a small compound of mud-walled rooms that open into a common outdoor ‘hallway.’  At the end of this hallway is a room surrounded by a simple wooden fence where petty criminals are held before being released or taken to jail.  If I arrived at the office to find my office door locked (which happens often when people decide to take tea breaks) the policemen sitting facing the prisoner area holding their rather large guns would insist that I take one of their chairs and chat with them until my co-workers return.  Despite having some rather entertaining conversations and making friends with the entire police force, I am very glad we were able to move offices.

Communication is always tough, even with my supervisor who speaks very good English.  I realize though that my role is somewhat bizarre even to Americans, who understand my language and culture.  Just the other day, on our first official move-in day to the new office, which is in the same complex as the mayor’s office, I spent the morning helping move office furniture across the street, and then sat in the office until lunchtime.  After lunch, I ran some errands and visited some Ethiopian friends to have coffee at their house, which they invited me to do a week before.  The next day, the mayor’s assistant, a friend of mine, came in and told me, “You were not here yesterday afternoon!” I smiled, nodded, and repeated my key phrase, “Oh, yes, the community is my office! All of Dangila!”  I am still hoping one day they will get it!

I will be sure to let you know as soon as I figure out what that cow, and what I am doing in Dangila.